Moving Right Along (Kuala Lumpur, Penang)

I saw pretty much all I wanted to see in Kuala Lumpur in one day. I didn't go up the Petronas Towers. I've been up Taipei 101 and while the view of the city would have been nice, I just didn't care that much. I did see a performance of different Malaysian dances, including representation of other resident ethnic groups (the indigenous tribes of Borneo, Chinese, Indian). I took a few videos. It was really well done; they were great performers with great dances. Talking to Jacki from Alaska, she asked me if they were smiling. I said yes and she said then they weren't really traditional dances because these things are serious and solemn usually.

I spent a day getting to Pulau Perhentian Kecil. I expected to have to stay the night in Kuala Besut where the boats leave from just cuz I got in a little late. There was a later boat though. I met Jacki on the boat, she's Alaskan Inuit and a diver. I hung out with the divers, then, and picked up a lot. I hadn't allotted time and money for a diving course but I wanted to go snorkelling. I was so stoked because the sites around the islands are said to be some of the world's best and they guaranteed I'd see a sea turtle. The next morning it began to pour and it didn't stop until two days later. So I didn't go snorkelling. I mean I could have stayed an extra day and shortened my stay elsewhere like Kota Bharu, which in retrospect might have worked well because I was bored after the first day in KB. It's made me seriously think about getting SCUBA diving certification. I'm meeting divers everywhere. It's like a cool club and I feel left out!

Kota Bharu was neat though. It's a fairly conservative Muslim city. "The Islamic City." They have their own sultan and businesses close on Fridays, a mosque or prayer space on every second block. There are signs around providing words of wisdom in Arabic and English. Most signs are in Arabic and Malay. It's not an exciting city but it prides itself on its Muslim-ness and promoting Malay heritage. They have a lot of little museums and a cultural centre where they do free shows: shadow puppets, martial arts, different music. I saw a shadow puppet show and took a couple videos. I also saw a coconut drum performance. The other thing is the promotion of handicrafts, especially batik and weaving (like baskets and stuff). The trouble for me was that there was all this gorgeous batik cloth around but the only clothes with batik were the ugly Muslim equivalent to moo-moos. :P Well, you know the long flowing tops and shirts they often wear. Not my style. There was also a really interesting market.

I made it to Penang/Georgetown with no problems too. I really liked it there. I could have stayed even longer than the five days I spent. There was a lot to see and do and the hostel I was at was really comfortable and the manager, Kenny, was excellent to chat with. I saw a lot of heritage buildings and sites; a fort, shophouses, mansions, colonial style buildings, cemetery, the usual. But there was a neat temple outside of Georgetown that they call the Snake Temple in English. It's a Chinese temple, I can't think of the deity just now, but they have live pit vipers hanging out inside. They just sleep on these sort of wicker stands in the day. I'm not sure what they do at night. It was kinda neat. There was a "snake farm" on site as well where you could see a lot of different kinds of snake. I kid you not: a huge King Cobra, an 8-meter long python, a baby anaconda. The guy took out one monocle cobra so we could see what it does when it's pissed off. They had a couple pythons just crawling around and a monkey. When they brought the pythons near the monkey she'd grab onto it and stand on it, put her face to it. It was weird but cute and I got some great pictures. The snake would just move out of the orbit of the monkey's chain if it got sick of it.

I also took a short hike in the National Park on Penang out to a place called monkey beach. Indeed there were groups of wild monkeys around. Long-tailed macaques. They were really neat to watch. Of course I went into many temples. The food on Penang was so excellent and so varied. I met an Australian woman who was staying at the hostel. The ATM ate her debit/credit card! We explored together for a couple days. I like meeting people to hang out with. I don't think I expected I'd be so social, cuz I'm not usually. It does get a little lonely sometimes, which is strange for me to say. I usually like being alone. Anyway it's been good, then, meeting people. We checked out a fruit farm, and it was the first time I'd ever seen a woman in an Iranian burqa. It was a neat change of pace to get a glimpse of Muslim tourism throughout Malaysia.

I got to Bangkok in a more round about and expensive way than I should have but now I know for next time.

There are way more things I saw and did and heard about. This is the super abridged version. It'll be too much to recount at one time by the end. It already kind of is. I'm a bit grumpy just now because my attempt to burn pictures onto a CD was a failure. I know how to fix it but I'm just irritated.

The Early Days (Singapore, Melaka)

Someone I met in Melaka said sort of ominously "It's always good at the start." She's been traveling for over six months. She's from Norway and started the trip in Brazil. She's had some interesting adventures for sure. I hope I don't have her adventures though.

Singapore was what I would have been looking for in Shanghai I think. Very visible European heritage, pizazz (pizzaz?) and cosmopolitanism. But thinking on it again, I doubt that Shanghai would be like that. Hong Kong wasn't like that for me.

Anyway, the neatest thing about Singapore is how modern it is and how, well, cosmopolitan it is. The major groups are Chinese, Malay, and Indian and they let it all hang out. But I got tired of the pizazz. Can't I just spend some time at a WWII site without there being a super audio-visual guided tour? It was also quite expensive, comparatively. I would recommend anyone to visit though. EVERYONE speaks English.

Melaka was really great. It didn't take me long to see the main sites but I liked just hanging out in my really great guesthouse. Part of it was a 100-or-so year old blacksmithy and the other part a Chinese medicine shop. It was very airy and open but safe enough. There were four single-traveller girls staying in the dorm. It was right in the heart of Chinatown which has some beautiful old houses. I was across the street from a Malay style mosque and a Hindu temple, and down the road a bit was a Chinese temple. One night we awoke around 3:15 am to drums and music and shouts and lights. There was a procession to the Hindu temple. I scrambled for my camera and ran outside. A whole crowd of people dressed in their saris and whatnot were in the street around a big electric-lit garlanded shrine housing some statue which they brought into the temple. The guys were handing out some fruit it looked like too. It was so surreal. In the evenings you get Muslim calls to prayer blasting and echoing through the narrow streets. And then the smell of incense from all manner of shrines and temples everywhere.

And what makes me happier than a ruined church and very old grave markers? Melaka was at its prime in the 1400s under a muslim sultan, then fell to the Portugese who were then defeated by the Dutch who then ceded the town to the British in a treaty. The ruined church was originally Portugese. Inside they have displayed Dutch and Portugese grave markers as early as mid 1500s. There's a statue as well of St. Francis Xavier whose "incorrupt" body was temporarily buried there en route to his final resting place in Goa, after he died on Shangchuan Island (China, not far from Macau). What a friggen interesting guy. Buddy went all the way to Japan in the late 1500s.

So I made it to Kuala Lumpur today with two of the girls I met in Melaka. The Norwegian girl will probably travel with me to Pulau Perhentian on the east coast in a couple days. I miss the quiet and chill of Melaka but I'm sure KL has cool stuff to see. Massive mosques I think.

It's been just a week. It's still hard to believe I have over two months more. I love hearing stories from other travelers. Everybody is so different. I hope I don't feel agitated and sick of traveling by the end. I don't want to be bitter. It feels so good to just do whatever I want whenever I want and to not be cold. I don't mind the heat.